His glacial eyes had me stumped for what to say next. His gaze had frozen on me, cutting through me like a razor and splitting me in half, caught between walking out of his front door or following him into his bedroom. And after little to no deliberation, I took his hand and joined him upstairs.
There was nothing warming in his presence. The ice in his fingertips stung and made me shiver, but I laced my hand deeper into his, seeking warmth from somewhere unknown to me. His touch sent a chill rippling through me, and still I held on, as though the cold might give way if I stayed long enough. It didn’t. I let him undress me anyway.
He searched my body like a map he had read before, and I searched his as if I'd lost something and didn't know where to find it. I had, really. As he travelled south, I turned my head west, thinking maybe I'd find me there, in his mirror. But I wasn't there either. All I could find was a different version of me, one I couldn't quite recognise, frozen beneath those eyes that had once deceived me as tenderness, and now felt like teeth sinking into my bones.
I closed my eyes and shut it out, fixing my attention on the unfamiliar sounds of his bedroom, the faint hum beyond his door, the rustle of sheets beneath us. I tried to lose myself in the darkness, to detach from the body that had brought me here, though I could still feel the cold settling beneath my skin. It crept further inward, past my ribs and into the places I had hoped he might warm. I unfroze my legs for him, willing myself to move, to feel something other than the growing distance between who I was and the person I had become in his presence.
The tension crept into my skull as I tried to bring myself back into a body I suddenly felt so far removed from. I had come here searching for something, but the longer I lay there, the further away it seemed, until I could no longer tell whether I was searching for comfort in him or trying to outrun something I would have to face when I left.
I dressed in silence, trying to gather whatever pieces of myself I could find from his bedroom floor. The cold followed me downstairs, out through his front door and into the night, where the air stung my face and I welcomed it. It asked nothing of me, and I knew better than to mistake it for warmth.
I may only be leaving with half of me tonight, but at least I won't feel it.